Alicia Keys is all about hard work and timing. (Alex Urosevic, SUN)

Neo-soul star Alicia Keys says she knows music's good when she gets goosebumps.

"For me, music is good when it gives me chills," the singer-songwriter-pianist told reporters in Toronto this week. "When I feel it with every part of my body. When there's no frontin' in it, there's no acting, there's no pretending. It's truly the emotion that I'm trying to capture or that I feel, and when I can sing countless times and feel the same way about it, then to me, I know it's good."

Asked which five artists whose music has given her chills over the past year, she named Kanye West, Anthony Hamilton, Coldplay, John Legend, and John Mayer.

"Damn, was there any women in there?" she joked. "What the hell does that mean? That I like men? I guess that's what that means."

Keys, whose MTV Unplugged album comes out Oct. 11 (the video version airs tomorrow night at 7 on CTV), says her wish list of future collaborators includes The White Stripes, Queens Of The Stone Age, Gwen Stefani, OutKast, Prince and Stevie Wonder.